eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

July 2011

07/21/2011

First, let me preface this book review by mentioning that the book comes with a preface by Robert Reich, praising the researchers for their work. Robert Reich tends to be the sort of economist that says things like “centrism is bogus” Both Reich and the authors of Spirit Level conclude that economic inequality is bad for people. They argue that by almost all measurements, the greater a country or State’s economic disparity, the great their social problems will be (teen pregnancy, infant mortality, crime, obesity, homicides, etc.)The causes could be debated (do States that produce economic inequity also produce these others things as manifestations of the same lack of concern? Or does the economic inequity CAUSE the other dysfunctions?)

The sentence that Robert Reich may or may not like is this though: “”greater equality can be gained either by using taxes and benefits to redistribute very unequal incomes or by greater equality in gross incomes before taxes and benefits, which needs less distribution. So big government may not always be necessary to gain the advantages of a more equal society. . . . There are many different ways to reach the same destination.” For example, if you look at Vermont and New Hampshire, you will find two states with different approaches to achieving equality. They are something like number six and seven in the fifty states for providing equitable incomes but they do it in very different ways. Vermont is the most highly taxed State in the country. New Hampshire is one of the least. New Hampshire simply provides people with relatively equitable salaries in the first place.

“What matters,” these researchers conclude, “is the level of equality you finish up with. Not how you get it.”

I tend to think that one then needs to look further to chose an economic position. One has to look at side effects of the two methods and if one creates a better “good life” for other reasons.

Question for comment: How would you go about creating a healthy level of resource disparity? OR is any disparity unhealthy in your opinion?

07/04/2011

Last night, I watched the BBC’s recent rendition of MacBeth, the original Shakespearean play set in Cold War era Russia. IT was a reminder that though History may not repeat itself, it often rhymes. Somehow, I suspect that the two periods of time had a lot in common.

“He may have reviewed his career to date. He was thirty-seven. His life was more than half over. And what was he? A member of the Central committee of a party of windbags, most of them, like him, in jail, the rest blackguarding themselves in foreign parts. His life was a failure. He spent whole days lying with his face to the wall. He stopped tidying his room and washing dishes after meals.”

It always amazes me what kinds of surprises are thrown up on the beach of time. Joseph Stalin, the man who is depicted in the short excerpt above was 37 at the time and in a Siberian jail. I was reminded again some years ago in reading a new biography on Stalin of the powers residing in the individual to accomplish good and evil in the world.

I was particularly interested in the period of the great purges, when Stalin buried political opponents and potential political opponents and potential groups of political opponents in a landslide of State terror. To me, the record seems to indicate that Communism was as fragile as we have come to know it to be, even from the very beginning. As a global movement, it had the power to ignite the sacrifices of the masses but when it received so little respect from the global community, it seemed to lose its compelling edge at home. As we read in chapter two, Lenin’s New Economic Policies had to compromise with human nature. Stalin was unwilling to do so. If the vision of a communist world failed to motivate the workers, than fear would. His plan was quite simple:

“The unpaid labor of tillers of the soil gathered together would produce colossal funds for investment. He would build a huge industrial economy. He would make the workers forget about wages and holidays. Revolutionary enthusiasm. That was the thing! They would be underpaid and underfed but he would provide them with someone to blame and claim to be their protector from more of the same. Wreckers. He had to plunge the country into an atmosphere of constant fear. Only fear could excuse possible excesses in advance and reduce the people to the level of subservience necessary for the great change.”

The failures of the Communist system had to be explained in such a way as to leave the theory a matter of indisputable veracity and its leader unimputable. Whereas in Germany, it was the Jews who were scapegoated, in Russia, it was the subversive hidden bourgeoisie that had to be ferreted out and eliminated. Engineers accused were told that it was important to the cause that they confess to things that they did not do. The people needed to be afraid of being called slackers or wreckers and examples were needed to motivate them and make them hyper-aware of wreckers and slackers and of the importance of not being one. Engineers, food production personnel, kulaks. Anyone who could be blamed, would be and then shot. There was not a class of accused people to organize and protest because any one from any class suited Stalin’s purposes just fine. All were shot or sent to Siberia. Reporting of famine in the countryside was condemned as counterrevolutionary agitation and could get you shot. In Aug. 1932, a new law made it a capital offense to steal four ears of corn. Lenient judges were liable to imprisonment or death. Meanwhile Stalin sold grain for money with which to industrialize. Millions starved. Thousands were shot for stealing food.

Stalin to Molotov: All the testimony of the wreckers in fish, meat, canned goods, and vegetables should be published immediately . . . followed in a week’s time by the announcement that all these scoundrels have been shot. They must all be shot.”

Stalin’s policies were clear “on the procedure to be followed in dealing with terrorist acts against officials of the Soviet Regime.” Investigations were to be completed in ten days, cases tried without public prosecutor or counsel, appeals for pardon not allowed. Death sentence to be carried out immediately.

Stalin would go over lists of the condemned. These lists still exist in the archives with his signature on 366 of them, totaling 44,000 names. Stalin would instruct his minions to get them and then he would always play the part of the shocked. He would then demand more investigations of people he had blacklisted to be done away with. In one of his memoirs, reporting the arrest of another batch of party officials, Yezhov writes that “information on another group of suspects is being checked.” This is peremptorily rebuked by Stalin: “You should be arresting not checking.” Some lists are written on scrap pieces of paper. One signed note contains the names marked for execution. “3,167 persons to be shot”

In Stalinist Russia, torture or the threat of it produced all the evidence that was needed for many if not most trials. “The confession of the accused is the basis of the case for the prosecution.” and “the confession of the accused is the empress of proofs” were proverbs that became the foundation stones of the Soviet justice system. The trials and executions had, as one of their intents, to destroy anyone and everyone who might have some claim to revolutionary pedigree. In short, Stalin wanted to be the only survivor from the golden days of revolution. He wanted to be the only apostle left. The whole order of communists, dating from 1917 were sacrificed in bulk, one abduction, trial, and execution at a time.

Essentially, fear drove the massacres. Everyone was afraid of appearing moderate. The only way one had of defending oneself against the charge of not being fully committed was zealousness.

In the Soviet archives one finds depositions with blood stains on them. In 1937, the nights were full of arrests, short trials and executions. The destruction of the party worked like a conveyor belt. In these years of terror, the NKVD went completely mad. Junior officials, seeing their comrades destroyed, decided that their best hope for survival was active involvement. In an excess of zeal they arrested even children as spies hoping to prove their revolutionary purity to any future investigator by their willingness to condemn accused saboteurs with abandon. Stalin called them all “blind kittens” for each successive batch would be condemned and destroyed by another. The failure of Communism to provide a life equal to the capitalist enemy had to have an unending supply of goats.

It is no wonder that Hitler concluded shortly before his invasion of the Soviet union that the door was rotten to the core and was just waiting for someone to kick it down.

All of this “vaulting ambition” – this fear and suspicion driven violence is amply reflected in the text of Shakespeare’s play about MacBeth’s rise and fall in ancient Scotland. Be warned though. It is a dark theme well played.

Question for Comment: Do you think you would be corrupted by the possibility of great power? Why or why not?

07/01/2011

There was a time in human history when artifacts had power and relics could heal. I have often speculated that in a world where people had little tangble ocular proof of faith systems their entire lives were built on, that the shreds of shoud, bone, and “evidence” they did have became vitalizing. We have all perhaps gone to see something that we had only previously seen in pictures (Fenway park, the mask of King Tut, Grand Canyon, a movie star). In some way, we are moved when we see them in real life. There is something physically and chemically inspiring and empowering in the moment. I suspect that Medieval pilgrims felt this spine tingling and assumed that the power existed in the object itself rather than in the mind that saw it. And thus relics obtained their “power”.

In the film Stone of Destiny a few Scottish students set out to retrieve the Stone of Scone from under King Edward’s chair in Westminster Abby. For centuries, English monarchs have been sitting on it when they are crowned, legitimatizing in a way, the right of the English monarchy to make decisions for Scotland.

Is it theft when you set out to get something back that was taken by force? It is interesting to speculate what Egyptian youth might do if they set out to get back all their stolen artifacts. The Rosetta Stone, the statue of Ramses. The bust of Nefertiti, etc. Hundreds of Egypts treasures lie in the museums of Western cultural capitals.

The Stone of Destiny is a nail biter. It is tough not to find yourself rooting for these “keystone cops” amateur heist. It’s sort of like Oceans 11 but without the sophistication. Makes me want to go steal something that someone has stolen from Vermont. Has anyone ever stolen something from Vermont?

Question for Comment: If you could go steal back something that was once taken from you or from people you identify with, what would you go after?

Merit pay for teachers. The breaking of the power of teachers unions. Horror stories of how difficult it can be to fire an incompetent teacher. Conflicts over charter schools. Issues surrounding the transformation of education in America provide fodder for recent documentaries about various reforms that are brewing under the surface of the waters.

In an economy where schools were actually doing a good job if they graduated 205 of their students into colleges, 20% into professional and managerial jobs, 20% into technology positions, 20% into the service sector, and 20% into manufacturing, it was not huge failure to find that only a portion of the graduates were capable of higher education. But life is changing for American students as many of those less education-requisite jobs are heading elsewhere.

I have recently watched at least two documentaries on the subject of Educational reform (Waiting for Superman and The Lottery) Both films focus on the process whereby inner city parents have to participate in lotteries to “save” their children from “failure factory” schools. Schools that start with the assumption that all students can attend and graduate from college, that will not tolerate teachers who cannot or who will not help students achieve those goals, that require mastery to pass demonstrate what can be done if there is the will to accomplish it. But at what cost. Both films speak favorably of the policy of merit pay. Ironically, the semester that I left Champlain, the new President had instituted a policy of merit pay as a requirement for faculty raises. I never got to participate in it unfortunately. I feel like I would be able to speak with more experience.

My son believes that teachers should have to “sell” their courses to students. He thinks that young people are perfectly capable of determining which teachers are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, fair, and talented. Students find their way to the music that suits them, the movies that suit them, the books that inspire them, and the colleges that fit them. Why, he would ask, are they not given the freedom to select the teachers that they believe will best serve them?

I confess, it is impossible to watch these documentaries of kids weeping because they did not win the lottery that would have allowed them to get out of some inner city “prep-school for prison.” In these places, something needs to be done. End of discussion.

Question for Comment: Should schools have to compete for students? Teachers for pupils? Would that force the system to improve?